


Catharsis

by BrosleCub12



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Female John Watson, Gen, Genderswap, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Parenthood, Past Drug Addiction, Post-Season/Series 04, Temptation, physical comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 15:31:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16621646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrosleCub12/pseuds/BrosleCub12
Summary: He honestly thought he had cracked it.





	Catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> So, it's NaNoWriMo and I should really be working on that, or tidying up my room but I couldn't resist this, both as a break and a warm-up. I've always had a very specific thing for Sherlock and fem-John together, both platonic and romantic; it's pretty much my bread-and-butter in this fandom and always has been. This week, I was struggling with the question of wanting something that's a bit not-good, which in turn became this. Please enjoy; feedback is appreciated. 
> 
> Sherlock does not belong to me and drug abuse is mentioned, several times.

* * *

It’s panic.

That’s what it feels like, rising up inside him like an explosion, a mushroom cloud of longing. Something that fills him up, distracts him, leaves him wanting nothing else but that, only that and that alone and it brings him to his knees with sheer wanting.

They’re on a stake-out, next to a dosshouse of all places, one of the most famous and filthiest in all of London, as Sherlock knows all too well. The murderer and his accomplice – his niece – are squirreled away in side, unaware that their every move is being watched. Sherlock feels the old need rising in his blood, looking at the house looming over them; the windows that seem to peep at him through gaps in their badly-nailed boards, the rip of a mouth for a door, concrete steps leading up to the entrance like clawed hands coaxing, beckoning: _come inside. Come inside and feast. Nobody will know._

Joanna, though. Joanna will know.

She’s sitting next to him in the dark, his doctor, stretching out her leg with a groan that permeates through the fog clouding his brain with longing, deliberately loud. This little shed they’re in isn’t ideal for her old limp, psychosomatic or no and he knows she’ll probably have a long, hot shower later to wash the musty smell of their forgotten shed away. He also knows that she’s watching him, watching him closely, is debating possibly handcuffing them together so he can’t deliberately evade her, should the need arise to give chase to their quarry. So that he can’t disappear from her side, into the dark and stumble back in the morning with half-clever excuses; with lies.

(They don’t lie to each other anymore. After the fall, after Marcus, they don’t keep secrets from each other, they don’t leave each other behind and they _never_ let each other out of their sight).

A light, plastic pop, a soothing trickle of something reaches his ears, a familiar scent tickles his nose and he looks across only to see Joanna, calmly pouring tea from a thermos, of all things, into the lidded cup.

‘Where the hell did you get that?’ he demands, momentarily forgetting to be quiet; Joanna has the nerve to put her finger to her lips, to look annoyed but not as annoyed he is with himself for failing to notice she had the bloody thing.

‘We are on a _stakeout,_ ’ she sounds out each word like they’re in a classroom, like that _means_ something – but then stakeouts have always been few and far between and generally in more comfortable places than _this._ She offers him the tea and he considers, just for a second, knocking it out of her hands out of irritation, out of his sheer want for something stronger – something seven-percent stronger.

‘Take it,’ Joanna’s voice is sharp, an order. Quietly, just slightly subdued, Sherlock does just that, drains it quickly to pacify her; too hot, not sweet enough. Joanna wrinkles her nose as he smacks his lips, breathes quickly after swallowing, hands it back without looking at her. He knows what she’s trying to do.

(If only her voice could shut down every receptor, every cell, in his body that’s currently rising up in their shared desires: _we want, we want, how we want._ If only she could bark at them all collectively to _sit down_ , to _behave_. Nobody argues with Captain Watson).

‘You okay?’ Joanna asks mildly, pouring tea for herself this time, as if they’re on a picnic. Sherlock glances her way, looks at her, _really_ looks (because otherwise the alternative is looking back at the dosshouse, its boarded windows like welcoming eyes and grim steps like coaxing hands, _come here, come here)._

She is tired; the bags under her eyes speak of recent exertion, as does the fact that she keeps checking her phone – worried about Rosie, guilty about leaving her again but always insists on coming along. Sherlock would insist upon it too, but then he would get a kick in the privates for the trouble and that would amuse Mycroft no end, so he always keeps the thoughts on the subject to himself.

 _I’m frightened,_ he thinks at her now, honestly, because he is, because that’s what places like this do to him. Because like a child – like Rosie, inevitably, in time – dragging a chair over to the cupboard to reach the chocolate biscuits they know they’re not allowed to have, in full view and open defiance of their parent, he could leave this shed right now, walk across the road and let the doors of the dosshouse close around him, locking him in while shutting Joanna out. She’s only ever able to follow him so far into the dark; after that, there would only be him, him and blessed syringes in hidden corners, head blissfully mangled.

He could. Oh, how he could. How he _wants._

Joanna steadies her gaze at him; widens her own eyes just a fraction, but not in surprise, not even in sudden awe. Just to inform him, in her own quiet, determined way that if he cracks, she _will_ put up a fight. Whether he likes it or not, she will do all she can, will hold him back from heading into the darkness on his own. She’s had enough of that already.  

Sherlock really wishes she wouldn’t and yet it’s like a blanket, settling over his bones, over the whole sky above his head, quietening him ever-so-slighty, just _slightly._

She won’t let him leave.

Joanna doesn’t take her eyes off him after that (they never let each other out of their sight) makes him the single target of her ever-thoughtful gaze; watches him with just a touch of _warning_ over the rim of her cup as she sips her tea, smacking her lips slowly, drawing out the ‘aaaahhh…’ sound she makes when she’s trying to fill a silence.

 _‘Please_ stop doing that,’ Sherlock snaps after the second time; Joanna’s shoulders shake with a silent laugh, unapologetic, deliberately distracting. The woman might as well be banging a pair of cymbals together whilst hollering ‘Look at me, look at me!’

She glances over her shoulder back at the dosshouse and Sherlock belatedly realises he’s taken his eyes off it; glanced at it every now and then (telltale behaviour that Joanna can see, along with hands that won’t quite stay still) but isn’t _doing_ anything, isn’t _watching_ , isn’t focusing on what’s _important._ A man is in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and that is why they’re here tonight; for the sake of justice, not for Sherlock’s own long-standing, more sordid desires.

‘Nothing yet,’ Joanna assures and drains her tea, makes a final ‘aaaahhh…’ for luck and Sherlock honestly wishes she were a man, simply so he could kick her in the leg for being so annoying.

She’s here, though. _(Come here, come here)._ She’s _always_ been here.

‘More tea?’ Joanna asks in a deadpan sort of way and Sherlock grimaces, shakes his head a little. Joanna has the nerve to look pleased with herself as she slowly replaces the cap, puts it down by her foot and Sherlock is debating asking her how she proposes to chase after anyone with a thermos in hand.

As it happens, the question is answered in the next minute or so when Joanna suddenly reacts, surges to her feet with a battle-cry on her lips, ‘Sherlock, they’re leaving!’ eyes fixed on the window and the chase is on, the game is on and both she and Sherlock are running up the road after the murdering uncle who has left three cyclists dead, his accomplice niece struggling to keep up. 

It turns out that a thermos is an excellent makeshift weapon for rendering someone out cold when they suddenly take exception to being chased and attempt to strangle Sherlock.

‘Well done, Joanna,’ Sherlock huffs, loosening his scarf, as they stand over Mr. Hazard’s (‘appropriate name,’ Joanna had remarked with a raised eyebrow when Lestrade brought the case to them a couple of days before) unconscious form, thanks to the doctor’s best efforts with the flask. 

‘Well, I couldn’t very well shoot him, he’s got his nephew in prison doing time for his crimes,’ Joanna shrugs, with a casual, devil-may-care grin in his direction even as she leans forward with a careful hand – small, compact but capable, blunt nails – to check his neck.

Sherlock can’t help but smile back as the police-sirens draw near; they wait while Mr. Hazard, groggy from his fall, and his niece, sobbing and blaming him for everything, are both cuffed. The second they’re led away safely if not happily in the (marginally capable) hands of the police, Joanna takes Sherlock’s arm and draws him away, right from the dark house looming up behind him, to find a cab; her hand lingers on his arm until they’re several streets away and ensconced in heavy traffic on the main road.

They manage to get in in good time and Joanna immediately bounds up the stairs to check on Rosie and to relieve Mrs Hudson, who comes down with a smile and slightly wobbly gait and heads back into her own flat. Sherlock hangs back, stands in the middle of the lounge, grasping his scarf hard, listening to Joanna gently coo to his goddaughter on the baby monitor, hears Rosie’s snuffles, her tired but happy giggles before she settles down again.

He thought he was over this by now. He honestly thought he had cracked it.

Joanna makes them both tea, puts three sugars in Sherlock’s, making allowances for his current longings and sits beside him on the sofa. With a single glance, Sherlock crawls across and into her lap, feeling her arms close around him as he settles, twists around to look up at her. He’s usually languid after a case, contented with the success of it – but now it feels like somebody sawed open his head and placed several stones inside.

‘I’m frightened,’ he admits aloud, calmly as he can manage, sips his tea with care. Joanna’s face is soft as she looks at him; not angry, as such, just accepting. It’s not even the first time he’s made such a confession to her: that night in the pub at Baskerville, a long time ago now, remains in a corner of his mind, but this time, he’s not in denial, not for Joanna, not for Rosie and Joanna’s eyes, her gaze, is gentle. She’s not about to run away this time. 

‘Frightened,’ she repeats, not a question, not a mockery, just a word, echoed back. Sherlock clutches his mug tight, careful not to spill the hot liquid on Joanna’s thigh.

‘Of what I _could_ do.’ A sip of tea. ‘What I _have_ done.’ Another sip, a glance towards Rosie’s baby-monitor. ‘And what might – still happen.’

Joanna raises her eyebrows, but nods sympathetically, a smile without humour curving her fulsome lips and she leans in a little, lowers her voice to a hush.

‘I go to work every day,’ she confides, ‘and every day, I’m always looking out for the next mugging, or the next murder, or even the next explosion. Other people, everyone around me, they just listen to their iPods or they text on their phones. But – that’s what _I_ do. I thought,’ she breaks off abruptly, chuckles to herself, an empty sound like a single pebble being rattled around inside a hollow cube. ‘I thought having Rosie, being a Mum, would stop it, but it didn’t. It _hasn’t.’_ She shrugs down at him, mouth pursed, twisted.

Sherlock nods, an incline of the chin. ‘Hm,’ is his contribution to that, _abnormally attracted to dangerous situations_ bouncing around the walls of 221b from two years ago _._ Joanna rubs his shoulder, almost distractedly, in her own silent exasperation.

‘I know it hurts,’ she nods down at him, ‘and that there’s… probably a part of you – a very big part, in fact, that wants to _not_ want it,’ she jogs him a little in her arms, not unkindly, just because, ‘and I know that – the only thing it seems right to do is just to – fall into it, I suppose. Even when it’s hurting you.’

Even if he winds up waking up in the morning on a filthy mattress, used dozens of times over before by the unwashed hoards who are intellectually inferior, but every bit as stupid, as he is, staring up at the coldly-clear ceiling with perfect lucidity, shaking down to his bones, the words _Oh, damn_ a splintered, wooden lodge inside his brain.

‘Yes,’ he agrees because that’s it. That’s _exactly_ what it is. That’s _precisely_ how he feels. That’s always how this begins: him slipping away from Mycroft and Lestrade – and Joanna after she got married, just for a while – and always ends with the trembling limbs and the quiet, inexplicable regret that he could never quite seem to shake, that somehow grew every time he did it.

But. He’s not there now. He’s here and Joanna is here, holding him firmly in her arms and he closes his eyes for a moment, rests in her lap, lets one of her hands tenderly stroke his hair (another want, one far less destructive and one which Joanna is far more willing to deliver). The shadows that linger at his shoulder he can often ignore, but not _all_ the time. Sometimes, just sometimes, they get the better of him.

Which means Joanna – long-suffering, faithful, constant – stays beside him, co-existing with the shadows if she needs to, but always there, _always,_ to help Sherlock navigate his way through them. Just as they navigate each other through all things, always.

‘I’ve got you,’ Joanna murmurs, somewhere above him and Sherlock hums, lets himself drift away on shallow waters, and feels safe.

*

  


End file.
